I've made some bug fixes to the server and I'd like some help testing. I believe I've fixed all cases where conquering a world screws up. For example:

1. Conquering a capital and getting a double capital.
2. Conquering a sector capital and having it stay a sector capital.
3. Conquering a capital and leaving an empire without a capital.
4. Secession bugs which create empires with no capital.

Please test out various scenarios and let me know if you find any problems with worlds not being properly conquered.

If you find a bug, please post a response here with the following info:

1. The game you're playing (Alpha I, Beta I, Beta II).
2. The world in question (give the name; rename it to something unique, if possible)
3. The rough region position of the world in the galaxy (if you know it).

Thank you!

p.s.: To fix the bug, I've had to change some of the designation code. If you see bugs there (such as not being allowed to designate) then post those too.

I've made an empire in Beta 2 named "Commonwealth" with capital world of "St Katharine's Star" located in the far west at the very edge of the map. If I have time I'll try to conquer a few worlds and designate them as sector capitals and we can test a variety of scenarios.

Is anyone actively playing who can conquer the worlds I designate as capitals?

Edit: on further inspection it turns out it may be a bit difficult to conquer any of the surrounding worlds beyond TL5 with the starter fleet so I can't designate capitals right away. Seems I was too used to having 6 million plus jumpships

One more thing: what about conquering a sector capital in progress of being built i.e. within the 24 hour wait time? IIRC that results in having the SC retain its designation (sometimes).

"Live long and may the Force be ever in your favour, Mr. Potter"
-- Gandalf (The Chronicles of Narnia)

"St Katherine's Star", now "Ares Homeworld" was taken by hoa004 and went independent as it should have. I had sector capitals named A to F The sector capital C was redesignated to be the new capital, followed by E and now B. So it seems the redesignation no longer works in alphabetical order (it definitely did when I played as Imperium, I tested that by inducing civil war on the main capital to see which sector cap would get redesignated). Is it random now or does it follow another algorithm e.g. closest distance to former capital, greatest number of space/ground forces etc?

Actually I was wondering if that was what caused the bug... when the Imperial Capital's name comes alphabetically after all sector capitals the game can't find a suitable world to redesignate as the new Imperial Capital?

UPDATE: Also, sector capitals in progress can be redesignated to the new Imperial Capital. Perhaps this shouldn't happen as the "local government" is still being set up on the sector cap?

"Live long and may the Force be ever in your favour, Mr. Potter"
-- Gandalf (The Chronicles of Narnia)

Is it random now or does it follow another algorithm e.g. closest distance to former capital, greatest number of space/ground forces etc?

Actually I was wondering if that was what caused the bug... when the Imperial Capital's name comes alphabetically after all sector capitals the game can't find a suitable world to redesignate as the new Imperial Capital?

UPDATE: Also, sector capitals in progress can be redesignated to the new Imperial Capital. Perhaps this shouldn't happen as the "local government" is still being set up on the sector cap?

The algorithm right now is whatever sector capital has the greatest military power, excluding any that are lower than biotech level. It also discounts post-industrial sector capitals and capitals with no trade routes.

The original bug failed to check to see if a sector capital was at least biotech. If it chose a more primitive sector capital, the code that re-designated to an imperial capital failed, because it wasn't biotech or above. The failure aborted the conquest code, and didn't run other code (such as re-designating the original capital to autonomous).

You make a good point about sector capitals in progress. I should either exclude those worlds or discount them so they're not chosen unless there is no other choice.

The empire "Zenobia" in the center of the galaxy in Beta II seems to have had the same thing that happened to Ontarion happen to it. No capital, all worlds bugged. This probably happened within the past 12 hours.